THE GREATEST ARTISTS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: THIRD INTERIM REPORT ON SURVEY RESULTS (July 19, 2000)

My survey of the greatest artists of the Twentieth Century is winding down, it seems. This time I have only a few new submissions to report. Minka Djanova wrote that only Kandinsky and Picasso would cut the grade, but she added that she was still struggling with the third candidate for the list. Following tradition, she feels that she has to come up with three names in response to my survey. In addition, I have quite a range of opinion from the Stuckists. Ella Guru, as I already reported, first declared herself a bit stuck (ha!) with the survey, and she also wondered how Charles Thomson, one of the founders of Stuckism, would react to Beuys’ popularity in the survey to date. Under pressure, Ella did send me her list, though. “If I had to make a list,” she wrote, “Bacon, Matisse, and Picasso would be on it.” Charles wrote that Van Gogh was definitely the greatest artist of the Twentieth Century. Billy Childish, another founder of Stuckism, wrote that the survey so far had come up with quite a load of crap. Picasso and Warhol, Billy declares, are the worst artists of the Century. To wit, artists do hate surveys like mine.